“Monday blues”, or “Monday syndrome”, is the tension and stress we feel on Sunday, before the upcoming new week. This fear can be present from Sunday morning, and with each approaching hour until Monday, it escalates and grows stronger. This unhealthy reaction can have rapid and unpleasant consequences for our health, so it is definitely worth fighting against.
Where does the fear of Monday come from?
If the weekend is your most important 48 hours of the week, and you are longingly counting down to the end of the working week, then you may have a problem. Unfortunately, it does not matter then how you plan your Sunday and how many attractions you “squeeze” into your calendar. If you allocate pleasures and good emotions only to the weekends, then you will only feel positive during those 48 hours. Unfortunately, the rest of the week will be marked by frustration and mounting tension. What should you do? Plan your week so that the activities you enjoy don’t only happen on weekends.
The culprit: work
The vast majority of our Sunday anxiety is due to the work that awaits us on Monday. The ever-increasing demands and job insecurity are largely the source of the “Monday blues”. This feeds on pressure, expectations, fear, and instability. If the only motivation to go to the office is to pay off the loan, and every day spent there feels like a failure, then the Monday syndrome can quickly turn into much more serious states. Over time, insomnia, chronic fatigue, outbursts of anger, aggression, and symptoms of psychosomatic diseases will accompany the usual tension.
The key: approach to life
Getting rid of the stress and frustration of Mondays doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to enjoy them. However, the key to feeling better here is to accept your own feelings – if you feel discomfort before the Monday meeting or due to the sheer volume of duties, try to accept this fact and let your emotions flow. Don’t run away from what you feel, don’t try to save yourself with anger or expressiveness. Just monitor your thoughts, name your feelings, share your fears with your loved ones, and know that you have a right to feel worse that day. When you let your thoughts and emotions flow freely, the tension will not accumulate and grow, and this is already a step to “unscrewing” the Monday syndrome.
Golden advice: do not avoid sleep
Many people struggling with the “Monday blues” more or less consciously postpone the process of going to sleep. The reason is simple – we want to extend the weekend and Sunday and postpone the arrival of Monday. This action is obviously illusory and only brings us closer to another problem, that constant fatigue.
You need to know that sleep is a key element in the regeneration of your brain and endocrine system, which work together to improve your mood, well-being, health, and energy. If you disrupt their operation and expose them to constant spikes of cortisol (the stress hormone), then you are contributing to Monday’s tension. Do you want to end this? Take care of sleep hygiene and try a weighted blanket therapy (i.e. sensory). Sleeping under such a duvet or covering yourself with a weighted blanket helps to reduce cortisol and increase the production of serotonin (the happiness hormone). It also has a positive effect on the functioning of our nervous system, so we calm down faster, our muscles become relaxed, and our chances of effective and healthy sleep increase every night.
